From Russia With Smarts

When London's ever-leering tabloids were reduced to running photos of Tim Henman's nervous wife, Lucy, last week, it could mean only one thing: Anna Kournikova was truant from Wimbledon. Depending on whom you believe, Kournikova has a back injury or has come to realize she can mint money without breaking a sweat. Whatever, tennis's great fantasy figure hasn't played a sanctioned match in more than a year. "I'm still playing and working out every day," she said last week, not ready to declare herself retired. "My goal is to become healthy."

But if Kournikova was physically absent from the All-England Club, her influence was everywhere. For we live in the age of the Soviette take-ova. Six of the top 13 seeds were Russian, including Svetlana Kuznetsova, Nadia Petrova and Maria Sharapova—and it's clear who paved the path. "Anna helped us understand that we could be the same as her," says Anastasia Myskina, 23, "or even better."

At the French Open, Myskina beat fellow Russian Elena Dementieva in the finals, and Sharapova looked strong on Monday plowing into the Wimbledon quarters. Like Marushka dolls, these prodigies who can hit the bejesus out of the ball just keep coming. If the world junior rankings are an indication, in a few years more than half the WTA's top 50 players could be Russians. Meanwhile, the tennis program at Moscow's Spartak Club, now known as "the Anna factory," has twice as many women as when Kournikova trained there as a teen. " Russia always had great athletes," Kournikova says. "Now there is more chance to play and travel."

Kournikova's timing was perfect. She was born in Moscow in 1981, and her ascendancy coincided with the fall of communism. She became the exponent of the New Russia—multilingual, brash and capitalist. She was a talented player, reaching the 1997 Wimbledon semifinals as a 16-year-old. But her real gift was an ability to swaddle herself in celebrity. As she once famously put it to SI, she was not a tennis player; she was a star. And she was paid like one. Her $3.5 million in career prize money was easily eclipsed by her off-court income. Girls in Moscow and Murmansk, seeing both her tennis success and the velvet rope lifestyle it afforded—one glamorous sighting: the pages of the most recent SI swimsuit issue—had a source of inspiration. Says 19-year-old Kuznetsova, "Anna showed there was possibility through tennis."

Divas, of course, tend to not tolerate their own kind. Sharapova, a leggy, blonde 17-year-old who has won three WTA tournaments, has been particularly aggressive in fashioning herself as the anti-Anna. "You can't compare us," she recently brayed. "People seem to forget that Anna isn't in the picture anymore. It's Maria time now." But Sharapova's marketing strategy—posing suggestively for men's magazines, using the Internet to brand her image—comes straight from the Kournikova handbook.

The irony, of course, is that as her disciples thrive, Kournikova, at 23, is in E! True Hollywood Story mode. Her parents are suing her for two thirds of her $5 million Miami Beach mansion. (Anna has countersued, claiming she only put their names on the deed for planning purposes.) She may or may not be married to Enrique Iglesias, and may or may not be pregnant. She is kicking off transatlantic boat races, attending B-movie premieres, pitching a reality show and generally leading La Vida Hilton. History will probably recall Kournikova as an underachieving player, albeit a pulchritudinous one. But as tennis adjusts to life without Anna, we ought to acknowledge her role in the Russian Revolution. If nothing else, it makes her famous for something other than being famous.